ANNOUNCEMENT – For the sixth straight year, the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) together with the Ministry of Health in Sri Lanka and other partners are hosting its 6th General Meeting and Conference on Interoperable Digital Health for Universal Healthcare Coverage.

AeHIN was created by the World Health Organization to support developing countries in their journey towards harnessing information and communications technology for healthcare. Over three hundred participants from government, academe, and private sector have pre-registered to the GM and it is anticipated that much discussion will dwell on the non-technical aspects of digital health such as governance, architecture, program management and standards. AeHIN posits that a well governed and clearly architected national eHealth program stimulates cross-industry collaboration which will enable solutions to scale to the needs of the country.

The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia (SIL-Asia) is a spin-off of AeHIN and was created with support from the Asian Development Bank to provide technical assistance to countries who wish to craft specifications that will allow various stakeholders to exchange health data securely. Springing forth from the University of the Philippines Manila, SIL-Asia has expanded its scope to the Asian region and is now in discussion with several countries to set up in-country interoperability labs. Among these countries are Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Nepal. At the AeHIN GM, these countries will launch themselves as the Community of Interoperability Labs.

The 6th AeHIN General Meeting is part of the Digital Health Week being organized by the Health Informatics Society of Sri Lanka and the Commonwealth Medical Association.

The Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia is a regional health interoperability laboratory powered by the Asia eHealth Information Network (AeHIN) and supported by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) with sponsorship from The People’s Republic of China Poverty Reduction and Regional Cooperation Fund (PRC Fund).

The concept for the Standards and Interoperability Lab – Asia was first conceived at the Regional Interoperability Workshop organized by AeHIN in Manila last August 2015 at the sidelines of the Global Health Research Forum. The regional lab was designed to serve as a template of labs in each country that will later form into the Community of Interoperability Labs (COIL).